After Bali Prison Riot, Criticism of Packed Indonesian Jails

Calls mounted on Wednesday for the government to deal with the chronic overcrowding of its jails and detention facilities following the latest bout of violent unrest to hit Bali’s packed Kerobokan Prison.

For the second time in a week, widespread violence broke out at Kerobokan, with prisoners rioting and taking over the jail on Tuesday night. Police and soldiers needed 11 hours to re-establish control, and they had to call in hundreds of officers and water cannons to do it.

Three inmates and one officer were rushed to the police hospital in Denpasar for injuries sustained during the violence, police said.

Rioters set fire to the administrative offices of the jail and the flames burned nearly everything inside, including documents and money stored there and an armory containing firearms and ammunition. None of the prisoners escaped, an official said.


National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Saud Usman Nasution said in Jakarta on Wednesday that inmates had locked the jail from inside and pelted incoming police with stones and cement blocks. Only 20 guards were on duty on Tuesday night, and they had been forced to flee in the face of overwhelming numbers.
Later on Wednesday, at 10:15 p.m., rocks and two fuel bombs flew from inside the prison. Police and military officers on standby outside responded by opening fire, a journalist there said.

Police immediately cordoned off the area. The prisoners were demanding the release of the three inmates who were shot and taken to the police hospital earlier.

Gatot Goei, deputy program director for the Center for Detention Studies, said the clear cause of the Kerobokan violence was overcrowding.

Citing data from the directorate general for penitentiary affairs, he said there were 1,015 people detained in Kerobokan, which is 315 percent of its capacity.

“The question is why nothing has been done to handle this known overcrowding,” Gatot said in a news release.

He said his organization was calling on the government to seek ways to immediately alleviate the overcrowding at Kerobokan.

The statement suggested allowing prisoners convicted of trivial crimes to serve their sentence outside of the jail or be given conditional release. House or city arrests could also be an option for petty offenses.

The government could grant pardons for petty criminals who had served at least two years in jail, juvenile, elderly and handicapped convicts, it added. Drug users, it continued, could be moved to rehabilitation centers.

“Complete the construction of jails and detention facilities across Indonesia as soon as possible,” the center advised.

Finally, it said, although it was obvious that steps needed to be taken to deal with the overcrowding, nothing had yet been done.

Aziz Syamsuddin, deputy chairman of House of Representatives Commission III on legal affairs, said the issue of jail overcrowding must be addressed.

He said that although drug users were scheduled to be moved to a rehabilitation center in Bali, that facility was only expected to be completed next year. A special facility for women and children is still waiting to be built on the resort island.

With such packed prisons, he said, violent outbursts should come as no surprise. Other jails in the country, Aziz said, suffered from the same problem.

“We demand that this be settled,” he said, adding that despite available funding there were no new jail construction or expansion plans in the works.

Aziz said the Nusakambangan island prison off the southern coast of Central Java could accommodate more detention facilities if necessary.

He added that jails should use conditional releases and sentence cuts as part of efforts to reduce overcrowding.